


Sabina

by orphan_account



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 5+1 Things, Adopted Harry Potter, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Background Het, Background Relationships, F/F, Female Friendship, Female Severus Snape, Genderswap, Healthy Relationships, Severus Snape Adopts Harry Potter, Unrequited Love, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-18
Updated: 2015-08-18
Packaged: 2018-04-15 10:10:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4602780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Sabina Snape's own life was different because she was female, and one time Harry Potter's was.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sabina

_August 1975_

It was quite possibly the most girlish moment of Sabina’s life. They were sitting on the floor in Lily’s room, and Sabina was watching the green paint on her toes dry while Lily read from a magazine she had nicked from Petunia. The redhead mockingly read out, “‘It is likely that casual fashion for the young English girl will soon resemble that of a Parisian peasant.’ Oh, _honestly_. Do they even listen to themselves?”

“Obviously not,” Sabina said. She wondered whether she should have picked the silver instead, but Lily said it would make her look sallow. And Sabina was already sallow enough.

Lily’s grin was wicked. “Could you imagine Fortunata Rosier’s reaction if we came to school in September decked out like Parisian peasants? She’d have _kneazles_. What do Parisian peasants wear anyway? Do you think we could transfigure it?”

“I don’t think my transfiguration is that good. McGonagall wouldn’t help us with it either.”

“Maybe. She likes cats.”

Sabina sniggered. “Pretty sure she’d call us vapid if we went to her about muggle fashion, Lily.”

“She’d call me vapid, but you? You haven’t been vapid a day in your life, Sabina Snape.”

She glanced over at her best friend, _her only friend_ , with the intention of retorting, but instead she felt her heart skip a beat as she looked at Lily and _saw_ her properly for the first time. She had always known that Lily was beautiful, clever, and funny. But now she understood that Lily Evans was beyond that. She was _glorious_ , and she was smiling at _Sabina_.

She realised suddenly why her mother had warned her, last year, about spending so much time alone with a muggle-born girl. Mum had said that muggles had _prejudices_ in a meaningful tone of voice, but Sabina had replied that theirs weren’t as bad as purebloods’. (Sabina still maintained that there couldn’t be a muggle alive who was as prejudiced as her Prince uncles.) Mum had shaken her head and gone off to argue with Dad some more, and she didn’t really heed the warning.

Mum liked to pretend that she was a parent sometimes. At least she had the urge more often than Dad did.

“You’d be surprised,” Sabina said rather thickly.

Lily rolled her eyes. “Brewing a nonessential potion doesn’t count as vapid, Sabby. Stop being ridiculous.” She glanced back at the magazine.  “Hey, what do you think about this frock? Do you think I could pull it off?”

Sabina had to glance away. It was like staring at the sun. “You’d look good in anything.”

Her friend blushed. “Shut it. Don’t flatter me, be honest.”

“I _am_.”

Lily wouldn’t believe her, though, and Sabina didn’t want to expand more on the topic. Instead she changed the subject and asked her if she’d finished her Ancient Runes essay yet, which of course Lily hadn’t. They went to do that instead of sitting around, and Sabina had an entirely silent moment of panic.

Now she knew, and Lily didn’t.

 

* * *

 

_June 1976_

The Transfiguration O.W.L. let out, and every student moved towards the exit as one — except for four of them who instead converged on a fifth, Sabina Snape with her head in a book. Sabina groaned when she looked up and found herself surrounded, but she took comfort in the fact that Lupin and Pettigrew didn’t look pleased about it either. Neither did Black, actually, but he was more loyal to Potter than afraid of Snape.

She knew what Potter wanted. He _pestered_ her about it.

“If Lily doesn’t want to go out with you, I’m not interfering, Potter.”

Potter’s smile was deliberately sheepish. “I didn’t want you to convince her or anything, I just thought… you know, you and I could talk awhile.” He _fluttered his eyelashes_. Sabina felt sick.

“I’m not giving you advice on how to woo her either. Do you think that this is a romantic comedy?” She scowled at them. “Get out of my way. I need to go talk with someone.”

“Evans went the _other_ way.” He said it like she never spoke with anyone else.

“I need to go talk with Emma Vane.”

“The Slytherin Quidditch captain?”

Sabina stared at him. It was a bloody miracle that Potter and Black got the grades they did when Potter at least seemed incapable of thinking more than three seconds ahead. “There’s only one Emma Vane in the school.” Emma had a younger sister and a brother who had already graduated, but their names were Lucinda and Stephen.

Potter pushed his glasses up his nose. “Why do you need to speak with the Slytherin captain?” he asked her slowly. As if _she_ were the thick one here! Pettigrew giggled.

“That’s a private matter.” She didn’t want to imagine what would happen if the so-called “Marauders” found out that she snogged a Quidditch player in broom cupboards. They weren’t _too_ terrible to her because Potter didn’t want to upset Lily by attacking her best mate, but that uppity bitch Sabina Snape, dating? That would be too good for them to pass up.

“Are you going to try out next year?” Potter asked. He was trying for polite interest, but it still came out mocking.

She had enough things on her plate, thank you. “Definitely not.”

“That’s a shame.”

Both Sabina and Black looked at Potter blankly, but Lupin had enough manners and kindness to add, “It’s a loss for the Slytherin Quidditch team, really. And ours for not having you as competition.”

Black snorted.

“Yes, well… I need to find Vane. I’m not going to help you court Lily.” Sabina couldn’t think of anything else relevent to add there, so she concluded with “Hopefully we won’t have any classes together next year. Goodbye.” She dodged between Lupin and Pettigrew, who were as usual the weak links, and hurried off to the third floor corridor.

She had given up hope on Lily ever returning her feelings, but Sabina hoped that Lily never fell in love with Potter.

 

* * *

 

_January 1978_

Sabina watched the owl fly off with relief. There went her acceptance of a place at Scholomance. It’d take her three years to earn a mastery in potions, three years abroad and three years away from Lily.

She shook her head. Away from Lily and _James_. Her hopes that Lily would never fall in love with Potter had been dashed, and she’d been forced to admit that the boy wasn’t _awful_. He was still arrogant and reckless, but he did seem to care about his friends and love Lily. Lily could have chosen worse, all things considered, but she hadn’t chosen Sabina either.

Not that Sabina had presented herself as an option. She wasn’t a glutton for punishment.

Regulus Black and Bartemius Crouch appeared out of nowhere, and she took an unconscious step back. The sixth years weren’t the intimidating specimens that Black’s brother and his gang could be (to students other than Sabina, that was), but it was disconcerting to have two children pop out at her.

“Can I help you?”

“Not… us…” Barty said nervously. He glanced over at Regulus, who sighed and took charge.

“You’re a very talented witch, Snape.”

She blinked. “I know.” It was common knowledge that Sabina Snape was going places, and this was without the help of her Head of House. Horace Slughorn hadn’t found beauty, charm, or the proper pedigree in young Miss Snape, and he had indifferently cultivated her these past six and a half year only out of a wish to endear himself to Lily. Lily had been endeared, Sabina had been frustrated, and she hadn’t gone to a Slug Club party in ages.

“You’re a half-blood,” he conceded, “but people say you don’t get on with your father. At all.”

“No one gets on with my dad.” It was a peculiar point of pride, but few people could say that they were as widely hated as that damn bastard Toby Snape was in Cokeworth. It was _something_ she could be proud of, at least.

“Your blood status could be… forgiven. Under certain circumstances.”

She scoffed and blew a strand of hair out of her eyes. “You mean by joining up with your boss and going on a killing spree? I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I have no problem with muggle-borns. Or muggles in general. My dad isn’t the only muggle I know.” She was too grateful to the Evanses for letting Lily’s charity case come over so often (instead of warning her off in disgust) to hate muggles, and she respected their younger daughter too much to hate muggle-borns.

Barty frowned.

Sabina raised an eyebrow. “Now get out of my way. I have better things to do with my time than listen to recruiting speeches. This year is my N.E.W.T.s, and maybe you should be worrying about that rather than what goes on outside of this place.”

“What goes on outside of this place concerns every one of us,” Regulus retorted.

She walked away.

 

* * *

 

_April 1980_

The Hog’s Head wasn’t the nicest place to stay, but it was cheap and it wasn’t her parents’ house in Cokeworth. Sabina was only in the country for her mother’s funeral, and she wasn’t going to sit around while Dad drank and claimed that he had always loved Eileen. She couldn’t listen to that much nonsense in one week.

It was only a week (now half-finished) before she returned to Scholomance for her final year. She attended a few family events with both the drunken, boorish Snapes and the haughty, bigoted Princes, but mostly she spent her time with Lily, planning out her child’s future. It was a pointless exercise, Sabina had told her, but Lily found pleasure in it. “Besides,” she had said, “I can’t do much else at this size. James’s heart couldn’t take it.”

James had been perfectly gentlemanly whenever Sabina showed up, and she was beginning to wonder if he suspected how much that annoyed her. He had even pulled her aside to _thank her_ for entertaining Lily while he went off and did whatever he did. (Sabina had some ideas, but Lily wouldn’t confirm or deny any of them.) It was like he was a completely different person from that boy who had asked Lily out at every chance he could get, and Sabina wasn’t sure she was _that_ different from the lovesick girl who had followed Lily around.

She was on her way to her room when she heard it, a strange, distorted voice: “ _The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches… born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies… and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not…_ ”

“Are you spying, Snape?”

She turned around to find Aberforth behind her. “No. I heard an odd voice.”

He squinted at her suspiciously. “And what are you going to do with what you heard?”

Sabina squinted back. “…Nothing? I’m going back to Romania in three days.”

He nodded at her. “Alright then.”

She nodded back. “Alright.”

Sabina went to her room and wondered what she would do with what she had heard. The baby was due in July. Had James and Lily defied the Dark Lord three times? No, they couldn’t have. They weren’t stupid enough to get _that_ involved in the war effort when neither of them had cause to be beyond their blood statuses. They weren’t _Aurors_.

She rubbed her eyes as though she could erase what that woman had said. It wasn’t any of her business what Lily and her husband got up to. She had applied to Scholomance in order to get away from Lily and to stop loving her in that way. It hadn’t worked, but that didn’t mean that she should stop trying. The first step was to stop relating everything back to Lily Evans.

“Leave it alone,” she muttered, and she went to bed. She tried to sleep.

 

* * *

 

_October 1981_

Sabina didn't have the luxury of crying. She had been frozen ever since Sirius Black handed her a sobbing, fussy Harry and told her, "It's finished, Professor. James and Lily are dead, and Voldemort is gone." He had disappeared himself before Sabina could ask him why he had betrayed them, why he had sold out his best friend (and hers) to the Dark Lord. He left her with their grief-stricken godson and his damn flying motorbike, which she didn't know what to do with.

Then Hagrid appeared. "Professor Snape?"

"Hagrid. What have you heard?"

"Heard that James and Lily were dead. That Harry's alive." She lifted her bundle (still crying) a little higher, and Hagrid's eyes filled with tears. "Poor tyke. Dumbledore says I'm to take him to his aunt's."

Sabina swelled with indignation. "You will not. Harry is my godson, and James and Lily left him in my custody should the worse happen to them and Sirius." (And Sirius would soon be in Azkaban, knowing him.) "I'm taking him somewhere safe till this all dies down, and then we can discuss further protection. You go tell Dumbledore that. I'll be in school on Monday."

It was Saturday night, Halloween, _and_ a Hogsmeade weekend, so the students were likely all stuffed with sweets and asleep over whatever convenient furniture they had in their common rooms. Slytherin could do without their Head of House for two days, and should they desperately need someone, Vector and Christie were Slytherins.

She had time to arrange protection for Harry. Remus was probably struggling to find employment, and Harry would need a tutor too. She could hardly send him to a magical primary school when he was already famous.

Hagrid, however, doubted her. "Dumbledore says —"

"Dumbledore doesn't have the right to have an opinion. He's the Hogwarts headmaster, not Harry's caseworker." Sabina figured that she had explained her point clearly enough. "Take Sirius's motorbike with you when you go. I don't know how to fly it."

She apparated back to her parents' home, now empty since Toby drank himself to death, and hers, and she set Harry down on the sofa until she could figure out how to calm him down and what to do about his sleeping arrangements tonight. She couldn't go back and take his own bed from the crumbling house, unfortunately, not when people would soon be swarming around.

Thankfully Toby had died secondly, so his will had been entirely muggle. No one except the neighbours knew that Sabina Snape owned the house in Spinner's End, and no one would know except those same muggles that Sabina had taken in her godson Harry, poor Lily Evans's son.

She'd tell them that Lily and James had died in a car crash. She'd tell Harry the truth when he was old enough to understand it. Seven was the age of reason, was it not? She'd tell him everything when he was seven.

She sent a patronus to Remus, and she sat down to cry.

 

* * *

 

_July 1991  
_

The first weeks of Aunt Sabina’s summer holidays saw Uncle Remus try to convince Harry that he wanted a Nimbus 2000 for his birthday (“It’s got speed, maneuverability, a _mahogany_ handle…”) and Aunt Sabina try to convince him that he didn’t want a self-stirring cauldron (“Error-prone and imprecise! Well, if you _want_ all your potions to come out like soup…”). Neither had much success before July twenty-fourth.

That morning saw Uncle Remus dead on his feet, the full moon two days away, and Aunt Sabina nursing her third or fourth cup of coffee with the _Prophet_ at her elbow. Harry was going to mention breakfast when an owl flew through the open window and dropped a letter before flying out the way they came.

"Is that —?"

Uncle Remus picked it up. "It is." He handed the letter to Harry, who looked more like the owl than he did James Potter right then.

“ _Merlin_.” He practically ripped open the thing, and Aunt Sabina and Uncle Remus exchanged looks over his head. (It was those looks that made everyone in Spinner's End think they were shagging on the sly, and that was why Aunt Sabina called them the "Scandal of Spinner's End.") He glanced up at Uncle Remus after finishing the letter. "Can we cancel class and go to Diagon Alley today?"

Uncle Remus hesitated.

Aunt Sabina said, sharply, "It's hardly cancelling class if it's just the two of you. Anyway, I thought we'd go next week on your birthday. That way we can buy your broomstick or whatever then and there." She took a pointed sip of her coffee. "Besides, Uncle Remus is feeling under the weather. Do you not want him to come too?"

"Of course! But —"

"Then that's that. I'll go write Minerva, and tell her that you're coming in September. It would be pointless to buy your supplies before you were officially enrolled, would it not?" She stood up from the table in a graceful motion and washed out her mug before leaving the room.

Uncle Remus sighed and smiled at Harry in that gentle, fond way of his. "She's right. It _is_ better to wait. There will be a lot of students there today and tomorrow who are as excited about attending Hogwarts. We don't want to be caught up in the crowd."

And there would be a crowd if Harry were there. Harry had only been to Diagon Alley a few times when Aunt Sabina was convinced it would be relatively deserted, and each time they'd been mobbed. Harry didn't want that when he was shopping for his school supplies too.

"Alright."

Uncle Remus ruffled his hair. "There, there. I promise that they're not going to sell out of your books in seven days' time. Or of broomsticks."

Harry rolled his eyes. "I _do_ want a self-stirring cauldron."

"Don't tell your godmother that. She'd have to kill you, and she knows all the good poisons."

There came a shout from two rooms over. "You're not wrong!"


End file.
